Conversions and De-conversions - Too much information

About the time I was forced to repeat my senior year of high school was the first time I began to doubt my Christian Faith. I did not doubt the truthfulness of Jesus, but I did doubt what role, if any, he really played in our lives. It was also a time of great adolescent insecurity and confusion for me. I was physically leaving childhood and becoming a young man, but I was emotionally still a very young child. Nearly every Christian who was involved with my life had a failure of Faith during these years. Either they left the Faith, revealed themselves to be hypocrites in their Faith, or failed in some profound way in their walk with Jesus. I did not understand how the Holy Spirit could fail in his empowerment of all our lives, but in the end I just chalked it up to our own human faithlessness. I graduated from high school in 1982, thoroughly confused about every aspect of my life, not just my Christian Faith.

Cape Baptist Christian School was located in the three-room basement of Cape Baptist Christian Church. When I enrolled, the student body consisted of 35 youngsters in grades 1 through 12. To keep things simple in my family, my younger brother and sister enrolled at the same time that I did, although their grades were much better than mine. The school followed the Accelerated Christian Education curriculum, which in the years since has become very popular with Fundamentalist homeschoolers. At the time, ACE was a new and revolutionary method of education, which incorporated Holy Scripture into our learning environment. The entirety of my ACE education consisted of me sitting in a small study carrel, reading selections from my student workbook, and answering quiz questions at the end of each section. Each workbook, called a PACE, contained a reading assignment, written from the perspective of Christian Fundamentalism. In hindsight, it was the most ineffective form of education imaginable. Not only were the assignments in history and science heavily slanted to favor Fundamentalism, but the questions were designed to be answered by merely repeating something we had just read. The education I received at this school was nothing but the chore of repeating what I had earlier read. It was nothing but call and response. We were taught no better than parrots. We had no teachers to give us lessons. Everything we needed was contained in the PACE. The ACE curriculum was nothing but glorified homeschooling. If I had a question, I would raise my little American flag over my study carrel, and an eager and untrained volunteer would come to answer our questions. There were 3 or 4 volunteers who helped us with our PACEs. I have forgotten most of their names, but I do remember Miss Betty, Brother Bert, Brother Dave and the school Principal, Brother Ed. The education and instruction was inane, but when I enrolled and learned about the workbooks, all mom and I thought at the time was, “this seems easy. I should be able to graduate from here.” It astounds me that the school was in fact recognized and accredited by the state of Missouri, so my diploma was valid.

Cape Baptist Christian School was my first encounter with the Baptist Church. The Jesus Movement of southern California heavily influenced my family’s earlier Pentecostal beliefs, and we were not at all used to all the rules that we suddenly encountered. First, I had to cut my hair. So much for that Peter Frampton look that most of us young teenage boys were going for. Second I had to shave every day. So much for that patchy peach fuzz I was becoming proud of. I had to wear a uniform. The boys wore a blue shirt with an American Flag clip-on tie, and the girls wore blue, ankle length dresses with white blouses and blue vests. I actually grew to appreciate the uniforms and short hair, because I had learned that much of my school bullying came from class distinctions brought on by clothing, hair and fashion. As much bad as I have to say about Cape Baptist Christian School, I will give them this to their credit – the constant bullying I encountered in public school vanished, and I actually grew to like nearly all my fellow Christian students.

We were not allowed to listen to secular music. I think this rule affected me the most personally. I could understand why they did not want us listening to KISS (Knights in Satan’s Service), Donna Summer (love to love ya, baby!) or God forbid, the Village People (disgusting homosexuals). But I did not personally enjoy most of those forms of popular music. At the time I was paying regular visits to the local used record shop, and learning about jazz, classical and British progressive rock – not exactly sensual music that you could grind your hips to.

I don’t know how many times I argued with Brother Ed regarding music. He told me that rock music was evil because African tribes pounded their drums with the same rhythmic patterns that were used in rock music during their Satanic human sacrifices! I told Brother Ed to hide all his kitchen knives. Since they were used to carve human hearts out of innocent victims of African human sacrifices, those must also tools of Satan!

Brother Ed told me that I could not listen to jazz since it is purely secular and not glorifying to God! I told him that by this logic I could not do anything – play sports, read a book, watch a TV show, or go for a hike, because these did not glorify God either! He told me I was right. Ooops - that argument sure backfired.

I also loved Handel’s Messiah. I had the complete oratorio on a 4 LP box set. Fortunately, I was allowed to listen to that! Of course, I listened to whatever I wanted when I was in my own bedroom, even though I could be expelled if I was caught. Mom certainly did not care what I listened to, and even enjoyed most of the same music I did. Michael mostly enjoyed country Gospel music and had many LPs in that genre.

Girls were not allowed to wear pants or make-up. Some girls belonged to a very strict denomination that did not allow their women to cut their hair at all. I remember one young girl, cute as could be and a year younger than myself, who had hair to rival cousin It from the Addams Family. She was allowed one pin to hold it all in place, since more pins than that would have been too ostentatious a display of feminine wiles. My younger sister hated wearing ankle length dresses, especially during Missouri’s cold winter months. The school was so emphatic about their students following Biblical standards of dress both on and off campus, that she nearly panicked when she saw brother Ed at the grocery store while she had her pants on! Brother Ed did stress that Christian values must be followed outside of school hours or we could be expelled.

We were not allowed to go to the movies. We could not even see ‘Disney’ movies, as family friendly movies were called back then. Everybody knew that movies were sinful and not glorifying to God, but even viewing Disney movies would fund movie studios with more money to make what they really wanted – movies that mocked God. Movies were out. Mom did not like us seeing movies either, although she did allow us to see some family friendly fare. And of course, she did cave in and allow us to see Star Wars. Television was also becoming a sticky point, and there were many television programs we were not allowed to watch. It was a different time and the boundaries that were being pushed back then are trivial compared with our modern shock and awe media. I still remember the hot flushed embarrassment I felt one evening while watching MASH. In a dramatic moment, Hawkeye Pierce called an evil Korean soldier a ‘son of a bitch”. I really was shocked, which I am sure was the program’s intent. Such language coming from the television really concerned my mother.

At Cape Baptist Christian School, my classes included New Testament Survey, Old Testament Survey, Collectivism (a sample test question from this class: “Where is Mao Tse Tung at this moment?” The answer, which I got correct, was “Hell”) and the subject I dreaded most – algebra. The algebra PACE was nothing but page after page of algebra problems. All I had to do was solve for x several thousand times and I could earn my high school diploma.

It was around this time that most of the Christians in my life had some failing or another in their Faith. My spirit empowered stepdad Michael Wagner began to drink. His drinking got heavier and heavier, and he would occasionally do stupid things like lock mom out of the house and threaten us if we opened the door for her. I remember what alcohol did to my real dad, and although Michael never physically harmed me, his drunkenness sometimes frightened me. He started going to AA, and had mixed success with that fellowship of struggling alcoholics. Despite our weekly prayers for him when he missed church, Jesus seemed to play no part in his recovery.

Mom was clearly backsliding. Her Holy Ghost inspired worship and daily devotionals vanished in the home. She prayed only on Sunday mornings, and although she still believed that Jesus was the only way to her salvation, it was clear to me that the fervor of her Pentecostal years in New Mexico were gone.

The members of the Wagner Family church were scattered about southeastern Missouri, and were all in some kind of trouble. All the children from that church, all the kids who used to roam the New Mexico desert with me, were growing older. We sometimes went to visit my friends, the Johnsons, who lived in a tiny farmhouse outside of Perryville, Missouri. The oldest daughter in that family was becoming a real beauty. Not quite an adult, but clearly not a young girl anymore. I knew there was trouble when I saw that her dad playfully let her sit on her lap, wrestle and giggle with her as if she were a toddler, and clearly ooze hormonal lust as she wore her Daisy Duke shorts around the house. This man, who I remembered from New Mexico as a fire breathing hellfire preacher was, to my disgust, clearly showing signs of lusting after his own daughter. I struggled with my own sexual sin, but he did not think us teenagers could pick up on his.

I occasionally spent the night with them. It was not unusual for us to sleep in the same bed together (I grew up with 3 of us crammed in the same bed). The oldest boy, E----, was teaching me about a great new fantasy dice game called Dungeons and Dragons. He told me not to play it around anybody from church, and he had already seen his fair share of trouble from it. Paradoxically, E---- sometimes placed convictions on me to take the Bible more seriously than I did.

“The Bible is like God’s answer book. I know you are having problems with school, with girls, things like that. But the Bible is the only book you need. You have a problem, you just look up the right passage in that book, and God will have an answer for you right there.” I found him convincing, and did my best to read and learn the Bible on my own.

Once when I was spending the night with E----, as I lay in bed with him, the lights were out, and were talking about things boys talk about. Then he asked me, “Have you ever heard about how the French people kiss? They place their tongues in each other’s mouths when they kiss. Sounds weird huh? Do you want to try it?

I told him “no”. I remember not being shocked, just confused.

“Can I rub my dick against your butt? It feels good. I know it sounds weird, but you will never know if you will like it until you try it.”

Again, I rejected his advance. It is strange that I did not move out of his bed. I just lay and went to sleep. He never spoke to me like that again. Perhaps it was just adolescent curiosity, I don’t know. Perhaps he was just a confused teenager, who spoke about the truth of the Bible from one side of his mouth and anal sex from the other. But his Christian convictions, and those of his Spirit empowered family were certainly not what they used to be.

I saw it again and again. Professed Christians, many of whom I had grown up with, were betraying their Faith. I had seen the miracle working power of Jesus in action! I had seen, with my own eyes, people being healed of all manner of sickness and deformity! I had seen people speaking in tongues, and being Slain in the Spirit! All these Signs and Wonders seemed to vanish as I grew older. It changed my own Faith. For the first time in my life, I doubted. I did not doubt Christianity, or the Salvation brought by Jesus, or the “plan” that he had for my life. I doubted the true power of Jesus to keep us under his protective wing. I doubted his power to give us the strength necessary to overcome temptation. Was it our failing human faithlessness? I had previously seen the evidence faith in all these people, even my own mother, and yet we were forgetting Jesus. At the time, I did not know who or what to blame for the hypocrisy.

I had my own hypocrisy to deal with, my own sins, and my own struggles. I know that I struggled mightily with my own sexual sin. I know I did my best to be Faithful to Jesus, and to allow his Spirit to empower me in the face of temptation. But like my friends and family, I could see the power of Jesus wane even in my own life. As faithful and as prayerful as I tried to be, I always submitted to my lustful thoughts. I was taught that it was never the fault of Jesus. He was giving me the strength. Rather, it was always my own fault. I believed that the fault always fell on my shoulders when I could not resist sexual temptation. But I simply did not know how to be any more Faithful! I prayed, I read my Bible, I meditated, I gave to the church from my meager lawn mowing earnings, I did everything I could think of! Yet it never seemed to be enough. The guilt and shame that continually ran through my mind during this time was a terrible burden.

At school, we boys were allowed to talk to girls, but we could not touch them or sit near them on the bus. If we had to take a bus to a school function, usually a basketball game, and sitting near a girl was unavoidable, we had to place a bible between us so as not to make physical contact. Sex was never discussed, only dismissed. This school never educated us about Sex, they only wished it away and pretended that it did not exist. We were told that sex outside the bounds of matrimony was Evil and Sinful, and that lust of a woman’s body was a grave sin and something for us to be shameful of. That was about the extent of our sexual education. But these rules and attitudes about sex were being pushed into my head when I was 17 years old – a time when my body was changing, a time when I was craving the attention of girls, a time when I needed that education the most! Since I had come from a background of hippie communal living, I had a better understanding of sexuality than most, yet it was still something that was never discussed in our home, church or school! I was at that age when I would long to talk to unreachable girls, to attract their attention and get to know them. When I could not, I had to go home and try not thinking about them – which was easier said than done when I was 17. But this led me to think of avoiding the temptation to commit the most shameful sin that I could commit as an adolescent, one I fought mightily to control, and nearly always lost.

“No. I will not. I will not. Lord Jesus give me strength. Give me strength. Give me strength against this temptation!”

I would imagine Jesus, looking down in disapproval from his Heavenly throne.

“No. I will not. Please give me strength Lord Jesus!”

I knew Jesus hated my Sin. I could not get the thought out of my head though. I know that Jesus told me that to look upon a woman with lust was already to commit adultery with her, and I knew that just thinking about her, pondering, entertaining the idea of being with her was just as sinful as fornication. I also knew that masturbation was simply the act of giving in to that most heinous temptation. I might as well be a rapist!

This act of shame and disgust happened very frequently in my high school years. Every time it was the same. I would pray for strength. I would ask Jesus for strength against temptation. I would wash my face. I would try thinking of something else. Eventually and inevitably my raging hormones, conditioned by millennia of evolutionary processes, would finally win. I would ultimately just give up, and give in to temptation while alone in my bedroom, and commit the most foul of lustful Sins in the presence of the Savior of my soul. Sometimes while wiping up the resulting mess, I would cry in shame and disgust. I prayed for forgiveness. “Jesus, I am sorry, I am sorry. I repent of my lust. I repent of my lust. I ask that you give me strength to never do it again, never do it again.” I would feel a sudden surge of moral strength that would usually last about two days before temptation struck again.

What was I to do? It was a terrible catch-22! I figured that I was losing to temptation because I was not Faithful enough to Jesus. But I did not know how to be more Faithful, except by praying to Jesus empower me with the Holy Spirit. But I did not think that Jesus was honoring that prayer because of my continued sexual sin!

It was this never-ending cycle of lust, sexual sin, guilt, and repentance that kept me in a state of religious anxiety. I remember once when a special guest was to come visit our church. It was said that he was a prophet, and some people told me, in awe, how he could look into a person’s eyes and discern all their secret sins. I somehow managed to skip that Sunday service. I feared being called out in front of the entire New Hope congregation.

I was not the only one. Again and again, I saw Christians give in to sin. Some continued to profess Christianity, others did not. In the surrounding years, I think I saw everybody fall to some extent. Our Christian summer camp, Camp Penuel, was a sanctuary for Bible reading and prayer by day, and a hotbed of teenage Christian sex by night. The dichotomy confused both my brother and me. One of our teachers at Cape Baptist Christian School, Brother Dave, was fired for inviting some of us teenagers to a party at Cape Rock. It included rock music and alcohol. Not that our principal Brother Ed was innocent, he was just more subtle in his approach. He practiced corporal punishment on only two girls during the time I was there, both were by paddle, and both were 18 years old. In the years since, both women have told me that he made a habit of paddling them, alone, in his office. They knew it was strange and creepy, but it was allowed by school policy, their parents had signed a waiver which allowed paddling, and the young women were left powerless to his obvious but secret fantasies.

Christian morality was crumbling in my mind. Sex was an abomination, yet it was everywhere. It was pervasive, yet it was never discussed. Everybody seemed to be engaged in it, yet it was wished away and repented of. It was only allowed if it was kept quiet and subtle. It seemed to be allowed if we were just sneaky enough.

I finally graduated high school in 1982. I had a graduating class of 3, the two aforementioned girls and myself. I never did finish my algebra PACE. Brother Ed gave me my diploma, on the condition that I would finish my algebra PACE over the summer, a condition I never fulfilled. I was conditioned to think that I would never be good at math, so it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Mom and Michael gave me a Thompson Chain Reference study Bible for a graduation gift. I loved it! It had a brown leather cover, with my name, in tiny gold print, embossed on the lower right corner. I still own my Thompson Chain Reference.

I had no prospects for the future. I had no skills, no desire, no direction. I had heard of college, but I was never directed towards it. That was something that rich kids did. Other kids got scholarships, whatever those were, and went to college. My dad was a lumberjack. Michael was a house painter. Mom picked up whatever odd jobs that she could. I was doomed to a life of low-wage manual labor, and I never questioned that destiny. I spent a very difficult summer with dad in a logging camp, and decided that logging was too physically demanding for me. I took the only route I could see open to me. I enrolled in the Air Force and became a telecommunications operator.

To my shock, mom divorced Michael. The drinking became too much. Mom told me that there were many things I did not understand. She told me that she did not know if she ever really loved Michael Wagner after all. It was then that I realized that she had married Michael, not for love, but just for the sole purpose of taking care of her children. She married him at a time in her life when she was penniless and desperate. Still, in my young adulthood, in my naiveté about the world, I did not understand. All those sermons I had heard over the years, all that talk about Christian marriage, the sinfulness of divorce and Holy matrimony was betrayed. I remember crying when mom gave me the news of the divorce. The last time I saw Michael was in 1985. Apparently, this Holy Ghost filled preacher’s son was running from the law. He had hit his new girlfriend with a hot iron and was attempting to skip on his bail. He somehow found me and asked for money. I had none to give, so he left. I was stunned at his hypocrisy! He drank too much, he was divorced from my mother, he beat up another girl, and he was trying to get money from me so he could hide from the law. I was so angry at bogus Christian morality, at Michael, at mom, at my own frustration, that I kicked the first thing that I saw. Unfortunately, the brick wall was harder than my foot, and I had to drive myself to the emergency room with a broken toe. I never saw or heard from Michael Wagner ever again.

OH! I nearly forgot to mention this. It was also about this time that I last saw the cute girl with the huge mop of religiously required hair. I did not recognize her. She had a pixie cut, modest makeup and looked as happy as could be!

This was a particularly difficult article for me to write. Dear Reader, I hope you will excuse my ending it with that happy memory.

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Conversions and De-conversions - Losing the fire, the spirit and innocence

So far, I am enjoying writing about my Conversions and De-conversions. I am noticing certain trends, and piecing together aspects of my young life that would lead to my continued entrenchment into religion, and my ultimate de-conversion from religion.

What, in my story so far, has led to my de-conversion?

My parents were not rooted in a strong religious tradition. They were just as spiritually adrift as I was.

I had an early, if undeveloped, exposure to evolution, paleontology, and astronomy.

I loved to read, even at an early age. I loved picture books, but I was not afraid of reading more advanced material – even if I did not understand it all.

I was already critiquing the very human nature of worship by seeing the artificial patterns in it.

I was inspired by personalities on television that were unlike anybody I knew in my real life. Television scientists seems so much more interesting than our ranting pastor, Grandpa Wagner.

But there were also things adrift in my life that would eventually lead me deeper into religious belief:

I was becoming increasingly aloof, alone, depressed, confused, and even angry.

I was raised in a stifling environment. I knew no other perspectives or points of view. Unlike my desert isolation in New Mexico, I knew alternate religious traditions were out there. I was aware of Methodists and Unitarians in Cape Girardeau. But they were not in my sphere of influence, and I had no compelling reason to investigate them. I had my Truth. My religious destiny seemed forced on me by a channel of ignorance.

Those were the ‘Seeds of Change’ in my young life. Each of these items would only intensify after my family moved to southeast Missouri, and I entered my high school years. One more item would be added in those years, and I am not sure if it caused my de-conversion from religion, or my entrenchment into religion. Probably both. I will discuss that in my next installment of this series.

I never felt more out of place, I was never more a fish out of water, than when I was living in Southeast Missouri. I still remember my first morning there, as I woke up in a tent Grandpa Wagner had pitched on somebody’s farm. I remember the smell of freshly cut alfalfa, rolled into giant circular bales, unlike the square bales I was used to seeing in New Mexico. I remember an intense humidity unlike anything I had ever experienced. I remember the peculiar Midwestern food, which was completely absent of beans, red chile, or corn tortillas. Nobody spoke Spanish, and there were no mud brick homes.

There were no long-haired Jesus Freaks who wore patched bellbottoms and ill-fitting, hand-sewn, embroidered vests. Except us.

The whole reason the entire Wagner family and church followed Grandpa Wagner in his move to Missouri was to spread his vision of Pentecostal Christianity. But the church that Grandpa Wagner wanted to start never materialized. Grandma Wagner, ‘Old Toothless’ as my dad called her, had died sometime around our move. In hindsight, I suspect she was the quiet glue that held the whole church together. She seemed to be a Christian relic from another time. She was a haggard, humorless, stern, frightening woman, and upon her death the whole church, along with the Wagner family disintegrated. Grandpa Wagner eventually married a younger Midwestern woman (‘younger’ meaning mid-40s), and retired to a life of selling his woodcrafts in local art shows. I don’t think he ever preached again.

The Wagner family and church split and went their separate ways in the southeastern Missouri region. Michael Wagner and my mom spent the next couple of years moving from one tiny farm town to another, looking for some kind of employment. We eventually settled in Cape Girardeau, Missouri where I was enrolled in 7th grade. My grades in school had already started to deteriorate before we left New Mexico. In Missouri, they completely tanked. The school bullying increased to an almost unbearable level. The classes in my new school were much larger than the tiny school rooms I was used to in Jemez Valley Elementary, and because I had earlier advanced a grade, I was still the youngest and among the smallest in my class. I was viewed as an outsider, an oddball, and a complete misfit in the Midwest. Public school, for me, was a complete and utter waste of time, and most of my time was just spent trying to avoid trouble. I am ashamed to admit that in being bullied, I sometimes, rarely but sometimes, became myself a bully. In my frustration, I sometimes beat up youngsters who were even weaker than I was – most of those with some kind of mental disability that we all did not mind laughing at. What a miserable and depressing time! In hindsight, I can honestly say that my high school years were by far the worst years of my life.

Those first few years were especially rough. I would sometimes skip school altogether, and instead of taking the school bus, I would walk to the public library and spend the day there. I still loved to read, and the library was my escape portal to the outside world.

July 20th 1976 was a monumental day for me. I had hoped that Viking, the giant probe then orbiting the planet Mars, would land on the planet’s surface on the nation’s Bicentennial, but it eventually landed on the 20th of July. In September, I saw the first pictures from Viking, when a photo of the planet’s surface made the cover of National Geographic. I was astonished. That photo I was looking at was the surface of another world! That tiny red dot in the sky, the wanderer that was named after the Roman god of war looked just like Death Valley in California! The photo I was looking at was of an alien world that no human had ever spoiled with a single footprint or had ever once been gazed upon. The Viking Lander absolutely astounded me in my youth. I desperately wanted to be a part of it, to be associated with something that immense, but had no idea how. Instead, I spent my time skipping as much class as I could get away with.

From what I remember, the religious culture of Cape Girardeau was quite diverse, but was mostly made up of various Pentecostal denominations and some Methodist churches. Of course, everybody in town claimed to be Christian, but I had been taught that most of the churches, especially the large ones that rung bells every day at noon, were dead, lifeless and without the Holy Ghost. They were no better than Catholics. They relied on dry liturgies, formulas, and ritual. My family looked for the smaller churches, those with little organization, and that got their power straight from the Holy Ghost. We found that in Missouri, especially in the backwoods areas, this could be carried to amazing extremes. We visited churches that were frightening even by our own ecstatic, tongue speaking standards. I remember one tiny country church, where a young man, completely out of control while he screamed in tongues, almost lost grip of his baby, which he held coiled in his arm like a football. Such chaotic displays were too much even for my mother. We eventually found a small, but growing ‘non-denominational’ church that was to our liking. I will call it the New Hope Church, led by Pastor Jack. I remember Pastor Jack and people of New Hope to be all very good people. Mom and Michael met many people there in the years we spent at that church, and my mom still has nothing but good things to say about the people there. New Hope welcomed us into their congregation, and most of the friends we made in Missouri were associated with that church. New Hope certainly manifested the spiritual gift of Other Tongues, along with interpretation, and Pastor Jack could certainly get excitable. But the chaos of being Slain in the Spirit and the frightening rants of Grandpa Wagner were over. New Hope seemed much more stable then the tiny, unhinged church that we left in San Ysidro.

My religious beliefs started to fully mature during this time. Jesus was becoming less of my invisible, magical friend, and instead becoming more of a god whom I must learn to obey and worship. It was at New Hope where concepts like the Trinity, the dual natures of Christ, Justification and Sanctification began to find their definition in my mind. The infallibility of the Bible was more emphasized than I had ever heard from Grandpa Wagner. Jesus Christ was God Almighty from eternity past, and was the creator of our Universe. Jesus was the second member of the Trinity, which was the sole nature of God in three Persons, being God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Ghost. The Trinity was analogous to water being in the forms of vapor, liquid and ice – not quite, but good enough a model for a teenager. Adam and Eve were the first humans on the newly created planet. Because of their rebellion, mankind was lost in Sin, and were thenceforth forever separated from the Holy nature of God. But the only Son of the Father, Jesus, because of his love for us, became fully human while somehow still remaining fully divine. Actually, Jesus was sometimes said to have humbled himself and stripped himself of his divinity, and other times was said to be both simultaneously divine and human. Confusing, true, but I did not at the time worry myself with those technicalities. Jesus descended to planet Earth, and as the sinless and perfect man, sacrificed himself to his vengeful Father, to redeem and justify mankind from their Sin. Our human obligation was to repent, turn to God, and accept the sacrifice of His only Son, thus rejecting our own inherent sinful nature, so we could become fully acceptable to His holy nature. The Bible was the sole authority of our knowledge of God, our sinful nature, and his gift of Salvation. The Bible was inspired and inerrant, meaning it was without error, and above doubt, question and critique.

Quite what this all meant, I don’t think I was fully sure. But I fully believed it all. I had no choice but to believe it. I might as well have tried not believing in my own Being as to not believe in what I was taught about God, Jesus, the Bible, and the predicament of His creation. It was the only paradigm I knew. I was vaguely aware that other religions existed, including dead and heretical Christian denominations and Catholicism, but I had little reason to consider them, at least not until my curiosity got the better of me in my last year of high school. My Christian Beliefs were the only Necessary Beliefs and there was no need or desire to question them. If somebody had asked me why I believed what I did, I don’t know what my answer would have been. I suspect the very question would have puzzled me. Why ask? The thought of even asking for reasons was beyond my religious horizon. I lived the life of pure Faith. There was no reason. It simply Was.

We continued to believe in the near return of Jesus in the form of the Rapture, and the beginning of the Great Tribulation, which was the seven-year reign of the Beast, popularly known as the Anti-Christ, upon Earth. A popular and amazingly influential writer named Hal Lindsey was becoming well known during this time. Nearly everybody read, or at least owned, his books The Late Great Planet Earth, Satan is Alive and Well, and There’s a New World Coming. These books, which were Lindsey’s interpretation of the Apocalyptic books of Daniel and Revelation and implausibly read into newspaper headlines, formed the backbone of many of Pastor Jack’s sermons. Instead of Grandpa Wagner’s hellfire rants, Pastor Jack calmly lectured us, with the aid of an overhead projector, the confusing interpretations of the bowls, seals, trumpets and other bizarre apocalyptic imagery. I did not understand much of it, except that the imagery of impending Holy War and the End of the Age was very frightening. I remember one sermon in particular, that I thought demonstrated the amazing prophetic vision of the Bible. Pastor Jack, with the aid of maps and hand drawn pictures on his overhead projector, showed how the blessing of Moses:

And of Asher he said, [Let] Asher [be] blessed with children; let him be acceptable to his brethren, and let him dip his foot in oil. Thy shoes [shall be] iron and brass; and as thy days, [so shall] thy strength [be]
– Deut 33:24-25.

was actually a prediction of some newly discovered Israeli oil wells located somewhere near Mt Tabor, which amazingly enough was in the ‘toe’ portion of the boot-shaped Asher. Most maps show Zebulon and Issachar to be where Pastor Jack included Asher, and I am not sure if oil was ever found near Mt Tabor, but we were quite impressed nevertheless. Driving home I told mom I was amazed by Pastor Jack’s sermon and demonstration that the Bible could predict the future so accurately. She agreed.

I owned a comic book, which summarized the popular apocalyptic beliefs of New Hope Church in the late 1970s. Surprisingly enough, it was made by the same people who put out Archie Comics, and I was shocked when I saw it again on the Internet. This comic, which I must have read a million times, is a good synopsis of my view of the impending world, and how to avoid being damned in the crossfire, by our loving Savior Jesus. I also find it quite nostalgic. I owned lots of these Spire Christian Comics, including The Hiding Place, Tom Landry and the Dallas Cowboys and Hello, I'm Johnny Cash. While not as horrific in worldview as Chick Tracks, they accurately represent my Fundamentalist beliefs of that time. Like Chick Tracks, I probably got the majority of my theology from memorable comics like these. Check them out.

Looking back, and comparing my young years of Christianity in New Mexico to those in Missouri, I can detect very subtle changes in our spiritual lives. Life in Missouri was immensely more complicated than the relatively simple, yet primitive desert life of New Mexico. As Fundamentalist as New Hope was, Grandpa Wagner and his home Pentecostal church offered a life of unquestioned absolutes. Things were simple when there was a single Holy Ghost, Fire Breathing, Tongue Speaking, Miracle and Healing Pentecostal church and a single heretical Satanic Catholic church in the town. Things were uncomplicated in the desert, where we made a simple living by selling goat milk and cheese to the hippies who came down from the Jemez mountains to our humble, mud-brick home. We were Holy Ghost empowered because we could be. We could sing and dance to homemade Gospel songs all night, with not a care in the world. Our penniless, Jesus Freak, hippy lifestyle was a temporary life in an alternate universe. Things were different in Missouri. Suddenly, family obligations became more demanding. Mortgages and bills had to be paid, and laws requiring children to be in school were enforced. Somehow, the Holy Ghost Fire that we had in New Mexico vanished. There were more outside influences from the larger population of Cape Girardeau, more religious diversity to contend with and alternate points of view. Mom and her three children were getting older. Our religion, though still Pentecostal, was becoming even more formulaic. The wild Jesus Freaks from New Mexico were becoming domesticated. Innocence was not quite lost, but she was slipping away like a dream.

As a born-again Christian, I was supposed to be living a life of sanctification, and continually emboldened and made into the image of Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost. But in truth, there was nothing special about this Born Again child of God. I was a very confused, somewhat rebellious, hormonally driven, misfit teenager. School was a continued source of torment. I was certainly smart enough, but I was apathetic. I was given no direction for my future by my parents, pastor or school. I simply drifted by, trying to avoid others. I was to graduate high school in the summer of 1981, but I flunked one too many basic algebra courses. I was simultaneously enthralled by Carl Sagan’s PBS series Cosmos, intrigued by Steve Allen’s other PBS series Meeting of the Minds, yet I could not pass a stupid math class, and had to repeat my entire senior year of high school. My continued depression sank me to crushing lows. Mom was at wits end. As ashamed of myself as I was, I fought with mom against sending me back to Cape Central High School for another year. I could not bear another year of torment in that school. Mom finally and reluctantly enrolled me in a small private school owned by a Baptist church, which we had never attended.

I spent my final year of high school enrolled in Cape Baptist Christian School (again - a bogus name), the smallest school I would ever attend. This was my first time being affiliated with the Baptist denomination, and I again stepped into another world of religious stagnation.

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